The present invention relates to an apparatus for winding and conveying a knitted fabric produced in a knitting machine, particularly a circular knitting machine.
As is well known in the art, a circular knitting machine has an upright needle cylinder or cylinders carrying vertical knitting needles therearound. As the needle cylinder or cylinders rotate, the knitting needles are reciprocated vertically to knit a fabric of cylindrical shape. The fabric thus knitted is fed downward and hangs or depends in a space below the needle cylinder. The depending fabric is passed between a pair of nip rolls to be flattened and then wound around takeup shafts that are aligned horizontally and have confronting opposite ends. The takeup shafts are normally disposed with the opposite ends in abutting contact and rotated to wind the fabric therearound into a roll. When the fabric has been wound up to a full size, it is cut from the trailing part of the knitted fabric and the takeup shafts are pulled outwardly away from each other so that the roll is released and placed on a movable stand having wheels, to be conveyed out of the knitting machine.
The above described type of apparatus for winding a knitted fabric into a roll is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei-1-59372 published Dec. 18, 1989.
In this known knitted fabric winding apparatus, it is necessary to cause a starting end of the knitted fabric to be gripped between the opposite inner gripping ends of the takeup shafts by shifting the shafts toward each other, before the takeup shafts are driven in rotation to start the winding operation. Because the starting end portion of the knitted fabric is hanging downwardly and the inner gripping ends of the takeup shafts are caused to advance inwardly toward the hanging starting end portion, the operation of gripping the starting end portion between the inner gripping ends of the takeup shafts is not carried out reliably.
In order to facilitate the gripping of the starting end portion of the fabric, the inner gripping ends of the takeup shafts are formed with slanted end faces, respectively, which mate with each other to hold the fabric therebetween. The slanted end faces serve to thrust the hanging fabric toward the center axis of the takeup shafts, as the takeup shafts are shifted toward each other. The slanted formation of the inner mating ends of the takeup shafts, however, tends to cause the inner gripping end portions of the takeup shafts to be transversely deflected so as to take offset positions relative to the center axis of the shafts at the instant of gripping the fabric starting end portion, because of force components transverse to the center axis, produced by the slanted end faces. This tends to cause a misgripping and a damage on the fabric.
In the known circular knitting machine, a roll of the knitted fabric prepared in the manner described above is dropped onto a movable stand and conveyed out of the knitting machine as stated before. This is carried out manually and therefore the operation is inefficient. Furthermore, the dropping of the roll imparts a shock to the roll and sometimes causes a damage to the roll.